I may have worked with Clarence from "It's a Wonderful Life"

There’s a quality sorely lack in these times, probably any time really, and that quality is grace.

Grace, like jazz, is hard to define, but you know it when you hear it or see it.

Hemingway’s code involved having grace under pressure, but how many heroes are there in these loud, tattle-tale times? I mean, I am sure they are out there, but if you have grace you’re probably not inclined to brag on a blog, smugly host a cable show, or yell at anyone to get attention.

I worked with someone who died recently who seemed to have this quality, which I readily admit I sorely lack. I am a mope by nature, sometimes an amusing one, other times a brooding Dane. But I am working to change that.

Steve Siracusa, though, seemed to go through his days with the grace of Gene Kelly dancing in the rain.

I didn’t know him very well, but that at first glance Steve seemed to an idiot like me to be a quaint old guy in rumpled out of fashion clothes (which he actually wore with a certain flair) who told corny jokes.

But Steve made people smile and had this joy of life about him.

Me, I am still all weepy over a broken relationship I don’t even want to talk about and whine about not being able to find a better job and don’t feel I’m in a good place for me right now, and, and, and, but, but, but…

In other words, I am a product of my bitching and moaning era, just another middle aged white guy stuck in the suburbs.

If anyone had a reason to be sour on life it would have been Steve. He served as an Army captain, and after World

War II, he was assigned as a traffic manager of sorts, directing all parties involved with the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials to their lodging.

He heard the horrible, evil stories, to see the cruel evidence: a Nazi wife who made lampshades out of Jewish skin; another Nazi who collected shrunken Polish skulls.

You’d think that kind of crap would haunt you for the rest of your life, leave you sour on sorry-ass humanity. Instead, he fell in love with Edna Skowbo, who worked for the Allies' legal team, who became his life.

And he spent most of the rest of his life as a salesman, including in his later years, here where I work. He didn’t seem to be one of those slimy types, either, but a guy who used his optimism to get you to buy something. Word is he even paid for newspaper subscriptions for a few people who told him they couldn’t afford one.

He wasn’t Willy Loman, but what good old Willy wished he could be.

After he got sick in his last few years, he volunteered at the hospital, helping others going through pain like he had.

The story goes that before he died a line of hospital staffers waited for a chance to say good-bye to the little guy with the smile and the optimism.

Not to get all Mitch Albom on you, but he said he hoped to see them all in heaven.